OWASP Cornucopia

OWASP Cornucopia is a mechanism in the form of a card game to assist software development teams identify security requirements in Agile, conventional and formal development processes. It is language, platform and technology agnostic.

The Microsoft SDL team had already published its super Elevation of Privilege: The Threat Modeling Game (EoP) but that did not seem to address the most appropriate kind of issues that web application development teams mostly have to address. EoP is a great concept and game strategy, and was published under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Cornucopia Ecommerce Website Edition is based the concepts and game ideas in EoP, but those have been modified to be more relevant to the types of issues ecommerce website developers encounter. It attempts to introduce threat-modelling ideas into development teams that use Agile methodologies, or are more focused on web application weaknesses than other types of software vulnerabilities or are not familiar with STRIDE and DREAD.

Each suit contains 13 cards (Ace, 2-10, Jack, Queen and King) but, unlike EoP, there are also two Joker cards. The content was mainly drawn from the SCP.

Other Decks

Future editions such as for mobile app development will use different sources of information and suits.

Mappings

The other driver for Cornucopia is to link the attacks with requirements and verification techniques. An initial aim had been to reference CWE weakness IDs, but these proved too numerous, and instead it was decided to map each card to CAPEC software attack pattern IDs which themselves are mapped to CWEs, so the desired result is achieved.

Each card is also mapped to the 36 primary security stories in the SAFECode document, as well as to the OWASP SCP v2, ASVS 2009 and AppSensor (application attack detection and response) to help teams create their own security-related stories for use in Agile processes.

Licensing

OWASP Corncucopia is free to use. It is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license, so you can copy, distribute and transmit the work, and you can adapt it, and use it commercially, but all provided that you attribute the work and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one.

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It is possible to play Cornucopia in many different ways. Here is one way.

Primary method

A - Preparations

A1. Print a Cornucopia deck and separate/cut out the cards

A2. Identify an application or application process to review; this might be a concept, design or an actual implementation

A3. Create a data flow diagram

A4. Identify and invite a group of 3-6 architects, developers, testers and other business stakeholders together and sit around a table (try to include someone fairly familiar with application security)

One suit - Cornucopia - acts as trumps. Aces are high (i.e. they beat Kings). It helps if there is someone dedicated to documenting the results who is not playing.

B1. Remove the Jokers and a few low-score (2, 3, 4) cards from Cornucopia suit to ensure each player will have the same number of cards

B2. Shuffle the pack and deal all the cards

B3. To begin, choose a player randomly who will play the first card - they can play any card from their hand except from the trump suit - Cornucopia

B4. To play a card, each player must read it out aloud, and explain how (or not) the threat could apply (the player gets a point for attacks that work, and the group thinks it is an actionable bug) - don’t try to think of mitigations at this stage, and don’t exclude a threat just because it is believed it is already mitigated - someone record the card on the score sheet

B5. Play clockwise, each person must play a card in the same way; if you have any card of the matching lead suit you must play one of those, otherwise they can play a card from any other suit. Only a higher card of the same suit, or the highest card in the trump suit Cornucopia, wins the hand.

B6. The person who wins the round, leads the next round (i.e. they play first), and thus defines the next lead suit

B7. Repeat until all the cards are played

C - Scoring

The objective is to identify applicable threats, and win hands (rounds):

C1. Score +1 for each card you can identify as a valid threat to the application under consideration

C2. Score +1 if you win a round

C3. Once all cards have been played, whoever has the most points wins

D - Closure

D1. Review all the applicable threats and the matching security requirements

If you are new to the game, remove the two Joker cards to begin with. Add the Joker cards back in once people become more familiar with the process. Apart from the “trumps card game” rules described above which are very similar to the EoP, the deck can also be played as the “twenty-one card game” (also known as “pontoon” or “blackjack”) which normally reduces the number of cards played in each round.

Practice on an imaginary application, or even a future planned application, rather than trying to find fault with existing applications until the participants are happy with the usefulness of the game.

Consider just playing with one suit to make a shorter session – but try to cover all the suits for every project. Or even better just play one hand with some pre-selected cards, and score only on the ability to identify security requirements. Perhaps have one game of each suit each day for a week or so, if the participants cannot spare long enough for a full deck.

Some teams have preferred to play a full hand of cards, and then discuss what is on the cards after each round (instead of after each person plays a card).

Another suggestion is that if a player fails to identify the card is relevant, allow other players to suggest ideas, and potentially let them gain the point for the card. Consider allowing extra points for especially good contributions.

You can even play by yourself. Just use the cards to act as thought-provokers. Involving more people will be beneficial though.

In Microsoft's EoP guidance, they recommend cheating as a good game strategy

Can I copy or edit the game?

Yes of course. All OWASP materials are free to do with as you like provided you comply with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 license. Perhaps if you create a new version, you might donate it to the OWASP Cornucopia Project?

How can I get involved?

Please send ideas or offers of help to the project’s mailing list.

How were the attackers’ names chosen?

EoP begins every description with words like "An attacker can...". These have to be phrased as an attack but I was not keen on the anonymous terminology, wanting something more engaging, and therefore used personal names. These can be thought of as external or internal people or aliases for computer systems. But instead of just random names, I thought how they might reflect the OWASP community aspect. Therefore, apart from "Alice and Bob", I use the given (first) names of current and recent OWASP employees and Board members (assigned in no order), and then randomly selected the remaining 50 or so names from the current list of paying individual OWASP members. No name was used more than once, and where people had provided two personal names, I dropped one part to try to ensure no-one can be easily identified. Names were not deliberately allocated to any particular attack, defence or requirement. The cultural and gender mix simply reflects theses sources of names, and is not meant to be world-representative.

Why aren’t there any images on the card faces?

There is quite a lot of text on the cards, and the cross-referencing takes up space too. But it would be great to have additional design elements included. Any volunteers?

Are the attacks ranked by the number on the card?

Only approximately. The risk will be application and organisation dependent, due to varying security and compliance requirements, so your own severity rating may place the cards in some other order than the numbers on the cards.

How long does it take to play a round of cards using the full deck?

This depends upon the amount of discussion and how familiar the players are with application security concepts. But perhaps allow 1.5 to 2.0 hours for 4-6 people.

What sort of people should play the game?

Always try to have a mix of roles who can contribute alternative perspectives. But include someone who has a reasonable knowledge of application vulnerability terminology. Otherwise try to include a mix of architects, developers, testers and a relevant project manager or business owner.

Who should take notes and record scores?

It is better if that someone else, not playing the game, takes notes about the requirements identified and issues discussed. This could be used as training for a more junior developer, or performed by the project manager. Some organisations have made a recording to review afterwards when the requirements are written up more formally.

Should we always use the full deck of cards?

No. A smaller deck is quicker to play. Start your first game with only enough cards for two or three rounds. Always consider removing cards that are not appropriate at all of the target application or function being reviewed. For the first few times people play the game it is also usually better to remove the Aces and the two Jokers. It is also usual to play the game without any trumps suit until people are more familiar with the idea.

What should players do when they have an Ace card that says “invented a new X attack”?

The player can make up any attack they think is valid, but must match the suit of the card e.g. data validation and encoding). With players new to the game, it can be better to remove these to begin with.

Volunteers

Cornucopia is developed, maintained, updated and promoted by a worldwide team of volunteers. The contributors to date have been:

Simon Bennetts

Tobias Gondrom

Anthony Harrison

Ken Ferris

Jim Manico

Mark Miller

Cam Morris

Stephen de Vries

Colin Watson

Also:

OWASP’s hard-working employees

Attendees at OWASP London, OWASP Manchester and OWASP Netherlands chapter meetings, and the London Gamification meetup, who made helpful suggestions and asked challenging questions

Others

Microsoft SDL Team for the Elevation of Privilege Threat Modelling Game, published under a Creative Commons Attribution license, as the inspiration for Cornucopia and from which many ideas, especially the game theory, were copied.

Keith Turpin and contributors to the “OWASP Secure Coding Practices - Quick Reference Guide”, originally donated to OWASP by Boeing, which is used as the primary source of security requirements information to formulate the content of the cards.

Contributors, supporters, sponsors and volunteers to the OWASP ASVS, AppSensor and Web Framework Security Matrix projects, Mitre’s Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC), and SAFECode’s “Practical Security Stories and Security Tasks for Agile Development Environments” which are all used in the cross-references provided.

Playgen for providing an illuminating afternoon seminar on task gamification, and tartanmaker.com for the online tool to help create the card back pattern.

Stable release (1.02) was released in August 2013, following feedback from mailing list and use with groups of developers

Release v1.03 included minor changes

Release v1.04 included a text correction on one card

Current release v1.05 included additional narrative and FAQs

As of March 2014, the priorities are:

Create and publish the Secure Coding Practices Quick Reference Guide identities used in the cross-referencing [Completed 10 May 2013]

Build these project wiki pages out [Completed 19 May 2013]

Include darker card yellow, green and grey colours, custom decks and cutting lines [Completed 12 June 2013, and updated further 18 September 2013]

Update the document/deck to shorten some card text

Map to OWASP T10 2013 and ASVS v2

Translate into French, Japanese, Spanish and other languages

Source funding for graphical design [Completed 1 Feb 2014]

Promote use of Cornucopia [In progress]

Involvement in the development and promotion of Cornucopia is actively encouraged!
You do not have to be a security expert in order to contribute.
Some of the ways you can help:

Localization

Are you fluent in another language? Can you help translate Cornucopia into that language?

Use and Promote the Cornucopia Card Decks

Please help raise awareness of Cornucopia by printing cards:

Use Cornucopia with specifiers, architects, designers, developers, testers and others, in part to train them, but also to solicit feedback on their usability, practicality and appropriateness for their work

Feedback

Keep the Cards Updated

As the source referenced documents change, we have to update the decks. You may also find errors and omissions. In the first instance, please send a message to the friendly project mailing list if you have identified errors & omissions, have some time to maintain the source documents, or can help in other ways.

Create a New Deck

The only version currently available is the Cornucopia Ecommerce Website Edition in English. We would like to create a new mobile app specific deck, probably using the wonderful OWASP Mobile Security Project as inspiration for the card source materials. Do you have an idea for your own application security requirements card deck? Perhaps for mobile apps or something else?

PROJECT INFOWhat does this OWASP project offer you?

RELEASE(S) INFOWhat releases are available for this project?

what

is this project?

Name: OWASP_Cornucopia Ecommerce Website Edition (home page)

Purpose: Cornucopia is a card game used to help development teams, especially those using Agile methodologies, identify application security requirements and develop security-based user stories. This edition is for ecommerce websites.